Camilo's flickr site

For more lovely photos, check out Camilo's flickr site. I've put this link up before, but he's added some new stuff.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51956952@N00/sets/72157594292674638/

Boxed wine and Fanta-sky's

Cheap boxed wine and Fanta/whiskey are both perfect party drinks. Ben and Cam are having a moment.

Min, Rose and me

This is me with 2 friends in Forecariah. Min's site is pretty far from me, but Rose is only a couple hours away. The only problem is that I'd have to walk 12k from another girl's site to get to Rose. Hopefully I'll do it soon. She has the nicest house in country with 9 sofas.

Cam and me at La Voile de la Mariee

This picture makes the fact that I haven't had a haircut in 6 months really obvious.

Junior

About the cutest kid ever and Cam's host brother. Speaks Malinke and Susu, so we couldn't really have heart-to-hearts, but I love him anyway.

Dancing Host Mom

She wasn't that warm of a person - perfectly nice, but just not as into having me around as the rest of the family. But I love this picture - this is the happiest I've ever seen her.

Hotness

Nothing says stylish like matching complets. Notice the wave detailing at the neckline. My mom is wearing fabric from Bamako, Mali. It is way more expensive than what I've got on and will make a perfect duvet cover for me to bring back to the US.

Grandma and me

Guineans aren't that great at taking photos, but it's kind of a riot. No, my grandma is not a mummy. But she did go to Mecca and was fantastic and sweet and hilarious. The little boy in the background was scared of me the entire time I lived there.

My house in Forecariah

That's my sister standing in the doorway. My room was behind the tree on the left. And you can't see it, but the kitchen is to the right of the photo. Guinean kitchens are generally outside due to the smoke, grossness and heat that are involved in food preparation. And to keep the rats out of the house.

Chez Vicki's

I couldn't even count the number of beers, Fantas and fries that were consumed at this place - it was about the only establishment in Forecariah that qualified as "classy," by Guinean standards of course...

Group Photo at La Voile de la Mariee

What a group. I'm realizing that these pictures aren't in a good order, but that's just too bad. It's taking about 10 minutes to load each picture. Goodness.

End of Practice School Ceremony

This is my 12th grade class singing a song to the tune of The Addams Family. We changed the words so it was about having Peace Corps teachers - it was pretty funny, about all the things we do that make them laugh, like how we laugh too much and drink a lot of water and talk a lot and walk really, really fast. Too bad you a. couldn't understand their English and b. hardly anyone at the ceremony spoke English. C'est la vie.

Breakdown in Vulture Village

Pretty normal for Guinea - laundry drying on the dirt, bush taxi broken down, and a Volunteer writing from the trunk of a car that should have been taken off the roads in 1986.

oops, this is sideways and I'm too lazy to fix it

This was in the Labe house on Site Visit Week. Peace Corps folks know how to have a good time. I'm the girl on the bottom with the yellow, orange and blue skirt.

6 Degrees of Bill Smolen

This is Melanie. She is from Wisconsin and met Bill in London at LSE. Only Bill knows people in as far-flung places as Guinea. Half of you probably think I'm in New Guinea. But of course Bill has a friend here. Love him.

The view from Rasa's house

To get to this place I just have to bike 35k. Which leaves my butt really sore, but isn't the view amazing? Rasa went home, but I'm hoping to visit some other people near here in the future.

My host mom and sister

Gorgeous, no? Too bad that little girl was scared of white people and wouldn't get any closer than 3 feet from me. I loved her anyway.

Cam and I at La Voile de la Mariee

This was on our way from Mamou to Forecariah after counterpart workshop - it was actually kind of cool that day, which was amazing. The waterfall was gorgeous but is probably not worth a $1200 plane ticket to see.

My sister's birthday and my going-away party

Don't you just love the cake? And my outfit? There was this big to-do and we had a "court" of people who were princesses and princes for the party. Official invitations got printed and we had tons of food. It was a good time and extremely Guinean. Notice that my host sister is wearing a hot dress and I'm stuck in a Guinean complet. She made this big deal about how wew were going to have matching outfits and then went to the party in a halter top and booty jeans!! The dress above was actually her second outfit of the evening. You could call her the Lindsay Lohan of Forecariah.

Development in Guinea

The first week of teaching went well - I did have over 100 kids per class and it was just barely controlled chaos. I'll write more about it when I get to Conakry, but my first official week teaching was great - you all know how much I enjoy being the center of attention. :) I just talked to my mom and was telling her all about my conflicting feelings about development and she told me I should write about it on the blog...so here goes. I'll try and make it relatively coherent. People in Guinea are happy. They don't have much, but they are generally happier than the average American, from what I can tell. So why bother with development? Well, for 2 reasons - women don't have choices and babies/people die all the time. Just during my first 3 months in Forecariah there were at least 6 funerals that I knew about, 5 of which were for people under 40. Guineans have little to no access to health care and even those who can buy medicine are never properly diagnosed. So everyone has sores that don't go away on their legs, gets malaria, and if you are in a car accident and are injured you might never get better. There are a few people who can afford to go abroad, like the President, who gets treated in Switzerland, but for all but the richest Guineans health care is a luxury they can't even dream of. Same with education. Only 15% of the population makes it to high school and an even smaller number makes it to university. I'm really teaching the most educated kids in the country - those are the ones who generally don't get married off at 15 to start having babies. So I oscillate between feeling like things here aren't really that bad and then realizing how few choices people have and feeling like Guinea really needs Western help. Not charity - I've seen what too much charity can do and I wouldn't want Guineans to develop a culture of dependency on foreign aid. But assistance. Right now a lot of money is going into neighboring countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular. These countries have been at war for a long time and are now stabilizing. Sadly, they will end up developing much more quickly than Guinea - part of that is because they were more developed before their respective wars, but a large part of the reason is that it's easier to get money from foreign donors after a war - gives good newspaper coverage and it's something people are supportive of. Guinea is now being punished for not having a civil war. It's just not sexy for the international community to help a country that's remained stable for so long. Guineans are Muslim, but very tolerant and understanding. There is almost no fundamentalism here. I think it's short-sighted for the US to ignore this country that could be a strong ally while pouring money into more fundamentalist countries to try and get them to be our friends. So what needs to be done? From what I can tell the Gates Foundation gets it - they have put a lot of money towards ending diarrhea and malaria. Next they are going to work on getting more kids educated. That makes sense to me - it's so easy to get money when natural disasters and wars happen, but thousands of kids die every day in Africa from preventable diseases. If kids are sick, they can't learn. I think that once children are vaccinated and fed and given medicine when they are sick there will naturally be an increase in education. Once that happens it's time to turn towards economics and jobs. Basically, development only occurs when there's a perfect storm of people working towards goals simultaneously. There is no one answer. Hopefully I'll be able to think and learn more about this during the next 2 years. While my life here is better than the average Guineans life, and while I can get out of here in 24 hours if I really wanted to, I still am living at a level that more closely approximates an average Guinean life than the people at the US Embassy. And if I think that I want to work for the Foreign Service I think it's important to remember that I would not just be an advocate for the US's interests, but also take an interest in the country I'm living in. And Peace Corps is one of the best ways to do that. Once a person joins the Foreign Service they are really cut off from what life is like in that country - I even heard that our PC doctor gets called to help them out when people get sick. They all live in such protected environments that they don't know what to do with things like amoebas and gihardia. For me, this is an important time to live in a community and figure out what should be done and also what doesn't work at all before I get a "real" job with a real paycheck and am kept far from the people I'd like to be working with. I'm not sure how much sense this all makes, so I might go back and attempt to make it more coherent later. Basically, Guinea needs help, not charity. And I have 2 years to figure out how to assist without creating a culture of dependence. Maybe development workers should take a Hippocratic Oath similar to what doctors take - first, do no harm.

I think I can, I think I can...

I was just at home getting all worked up about teaching tomorrow. Teaching 150 kids? Even if only half show up that's still 75 kids!!! Eek. But I got my butt out of my house and went to the school to try and talk to another English teacher. None of them were there, but I met some more teachers and talked with my friend Mr. Barry. Now I feel much better. He basically told me not to worry about it in 10 different ways. I'm going to take his advice, plan a short lesson and try and figure out how to gauge the students English tomorrow during class. It's going to be hard teaching a subject where talking is so important while still trying to get all 100 plus kids to stay quiet most of the time. Hmmm.

My house is great but empty. The guardian at my concession is a really nice guy who speaks no French but also works at a bakery that sells bread that rivals the baguettes you'd buy in Paris. Yum. I've had lots of visitors and have kept up my 2 yogurt a day habit from the tailor - who would guess that a tailor would have the best yogurt in country? And a small bag of it is 500 francs, less than 10 cents. People here sell some of the funniest things and it's so hard to guess where to buy anything. At first it just seems like chaos but I'm starting to see that there's a method to the madness. Yesterday I was with 2 Volunteers and we were looking for honey. We found some market ladies that the other girls knew and figured out the Pulaar word for honey and then they took us to this shop that looked like a mechanic's garage. We were sure they had no idea what we were looking for but were too embarrassed to tell us - Guineans don't like to tell you if they don't know something. The men busted out these large gas containers and they were actually full of honey! We bought 3 liters of the stuff for 24 mille, or about 4 dollars. It amazes me the stuff you can track down!

Still no screens, but my counterpart told me he saw the guy working on them yesterday and he's sure they will be done tomorrow. I'm going to have him or another person from the school come with me to bargain for some furniture soon - I really need some shelving in my house. And right now I relax on my bed or ThermaRest pad in the living room, so I should really get a couch and some chairs!

Wish me luck tomorrow as I attempt to navigate my way through a high school of 3,600 while being the only white person/English speaker/new teacher!

150 kids in a class? No problem.

Hi everyone - so I got my teaching schedule. I'm teaching Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from 10-1. So easy, right? Umm, except that I'm teaching up to 150 students per class!!!! That's going to be insane. School starts on Monday and I'll update and let you know if I'm in danger of getting whack-evaced.

Sarah and Devan stayed with me 2 nights ago and we had a great time, I'm also getting screens put on my windows ASAP - already found the guy and bought all the materials. That bird isn't getting back in my house! Anyway, yesterday morning the mail run came to my house and brought me my bike and my mail and packages. It was better than Christmas. Mom, Rebekah/Lydia and Arlene all sent packages and I dumped everything out on the floor and really almost cried a little. Now my trunk is filled with American goodies and I ate a tuna sandwich for lunch today and I couldn't be more thrilled. Yay for them!

Once I got my bike and put my trashy magazines away, I got on the bike and went 35k to a nearby site. The amazing girl who showed me around during site visit has decided to go home and I went to her site to hang out and say good-bye. She also left me a spatula and some other nice things. It's really too bad that she's going, but I can understand. I think that it's really hard for extensionists i.e. the non-teachers to find work to do and I can see that it would get discouraging. Anyway, so I biked out there and we had a good night hanging out and drinking disgusting amounts of Crystal Light that she had. This morning I went to another girl's site with a friend and then we all biked back to Mamou. I've biked 70k in 2 days! My butt is going to be incredibly sore tomorrow. Tonight I'm looking forward to being along in my house and reading the magazines I now have. Jen, Brad, Angelina and TomKat will keep me company this evening.

Oh, shoot. I have to go. The guy who runs the computer place needs to go break his fast - it's Ramadan and everyone is hungry. Everyone but us Christians! Apparently Christians here fast during Lent, but that will not be me. Can you imagine teaching 150 kids with an empty stomach and no water? No thanks.

I'll update again soon, it's so nice to be at site and have internet. Now I just need furniture, screens and the ability to control 450 students for 9 hours a week and I'm set.

Miss you all!

Battle of the bird

Those of you who know me know that I hate birds. And bats. And rats. Maybe the Peace Corps wasn't the best decision??!!

I'm finally at site and will write more about it when I have more time, but it's great so far and it appears that school will start October 9th or in November. Ah, Guinea.

Yesterday I took a nap and when I woke up there was a tiny, adorable red bird freaking out in my house. I need to get screens ASAP. So of course I flipped out and ran to my room and slammed the door. Then I sat on my bed trying to tell myself that it was just a cute little bird and I had nothing to be afraid of. After 20 minutes I took a towel and hid behind it, then went out to try and open some windows for the bird. I freaked out again and ran back to my room. Eventually I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag and went back out, but this time it was on the ground hopping around!! After an hour I left my room, sprinted to my door and ran out of my house, leaving my door open. It finally came out the door a couple minutes later, but I had to play it all cool cause there were about 30 kids in my concession all watching me.

Ugh, I have 2 minutes and need to get this posted. Will write again soon. My electricity and running water work at site. Posh Corps!